The Art of Illumination

Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Suffrages of the Saints
Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, Folio 161r

This horrifying scene of the flaying of the live saint is full of grisly detail. The executioner at left steadies his foot against the table’s tripod support, holding his knife in his mouth as he rips off a sheet of the saint’s flesh. The scene takes place in a landscape with a distant city and a background of blue sky instead of a pattern, yet God the Father appears above in a semicircular extension of the frame, supported by red seraphim.